Evelyn Bender

Librarian, Edison/Fareira High School
Philadelphia, PA
ebender@dept.english.upenn.edu

I've been the librarian at Edison/Fareira High School (E/F) for nine years, and have worked at elementary and middle schools in this North Philadelphia neighborhood for nine years before that. E/F is the Latino High School in the city and very large--3,000 students, most of whom are bilingual. We have the whole range of urban problems, but we're working on supporting youngsters to graduate, go on to college, and jobs.

Part of our support is making technology accessible to the students--we have several computer facilities: in the English, business, and computer science departments and the library. Several years ago, working with local PBS station WHYY, we received a grant from the Public Broadcasting System, which enabled us to install a T1 line in the library, which has been extended to some of the classrooms in the building. This has been a tremendous success--for research and for publishing. Many students have created their own web sites, use e-mail, and independently find information on the web. The entire school is scheduled to be wired by November. It's very satisfying to us to send students into the world having mastered a range of computer skills.

I'm involved in a number of programs at E/F: an environmental science project that will rejuvenate an existing pond on the campus and create an environmental center, two partnerships with the University of Pennsylvania (one has been ongoing for seven years), the Honor Society and the technology committee. A group of us are working on becoming part of Library Power and setting up a reading initiative.

Personally, I love films; Philadelphia is a good city for seeing all types of movies, and has a great film festival in the spring. Occasionally, I go to New York to catch films that probably will not open here.

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Byron Stoloff
Social Studies Teacher, Edison/Fareira High School
Philadelphia, PA
rstoloff@mail.phila.k12.pa.us

I've been teaching for 29 exciting years. I've been in only three different schools, for approximately 14 years each. I've served in a variety of positions outside of the classroom such as a building committee member, yearbook and senior sponsor, chair of the Restructuring Council, and for the last 20 years, computer maven with the official title of Technology Teacher Leader. In all this time I've never been busier, more worn out at the end of the day, nor happier than I am now. I've taught every course offered in the schools from African-American History to Education in Entrepreneurial Economics and each year is often a toss-up as to what I will actually teach. Whenever people find out that with all my involvement in computers that I'm a social studies teacher they stare as if I'd just grown another head. They say something like, "Oh, I thought you were a math or science teacher...." That is the stereotype, but though I have a Master's in Computer Science Education, I would far more enjoy using computers to teach than teach computers. The image I have of me in front of a class teaching Pascal or C++ (no offense) is close to my image of Hell. What I'd much rather do is get the kids to think of what was and what can be. Social studies is the greatest way to approach that and because of its structure we can discuss virtually anything that happens in the world, at large, or in my kid's lives. This is Heaven.

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